Wednesday, 10 August 2011

Trivium - In Waves (Review)

The just newly released album from Trivium is In Waves after a three year wait from the previous. This album even before listening to it was different to many other, this album (being the Special Edition) had 18 songs on the album, so I know I was in for a long ride. And sure was taking a good amount of time reviewing each song, which is why there was a gap between posts, so this will be fairly long. The band did release a music video which is sort of slow paced and kind of a more artsy music video than their other music videos.

The album "In Waves" is quite different to their previous album "Shogun" and quite different to their single release of "Shattering The Skies Above", which I found quite surprising as they just got a new drummer Nick Augusto who was previously in a metalcore band, and with the drumming done in "Shattering The Skies Above" I assumed their would be more blast beats and actually a little heavier than their previous albums.

This album is actually a little less technical in my opinion than their previous album "Shogun" which I really liked the sort of technical and some what heavy songs their wrote for that album, being my favourite of theirs. Unfortunately, I do not usually do this, but I looked at a few other people's reviews, and found we all came to a same conclusion, including another avid fan of metal a friend of mine said "It is not as good as I thought it was going to be". Sure it sounds Trivium, so they didn't change, but it just doesn't seem to have pushed to something new and avid as their previous album "Shogun". Though I would not say it is a bad album, it is quite superb, and anyone saying other wise is ignoring the effort, and skill put together for this album.

As said before the guitar work of the album is more melodic than their other albums and a bit less technical, which I kind of dislike as Trivium is one of those bands that built up a sort of "have an awesome solo a song" sort of thing, but this album is kind of off from that. Though the melodic writing is quite well done, and Matt Heafy has even kept some of that sort of "Ascendency" feel to a few of their songs in my opinion like "Built To Fall", while the next track "Caustic Are The Ties That Bind" sounds so different, but the vocals sound so clear and clean, that this would feel like one of the songs they should of kept in the album, while other I believe should of been replaced with a more heavier and sort of older Trivium to settle the new ideas and the feel of Trivium. Even in that song the solo isn't as "Trivium feeling" as I thought it was, and was surprising as it that feel seemed constant through out their albums. Vocals are nice and clean, but more clean is put in the albu, which I felt was odd knowing that people's response to "Crusade" wasn't to positive when that happened.

Overall the album is quite nice and well put together with a nice amount of songs to go along with it. Though it doesn't feel how Trivium were meant to go, especially how I really liked "Shattering The Skies Above", where it felt they were staying "Trivium like" but with some heavier stuff put in. But I believe this album should be respected from such a band. Though their music video seems a bit odd, I feel like that the drummer shouldn't of changed, though that was the drummer's choice. But I believe the reviewers are being quite to unfair with their opinions on the album.